Lucía

Lucía is now playing virtually through 4/28.

Access the ND/NF at 50: Retrospective virtually nationwide!

• FLC Virtual Cinema: Free to the general public on April 16 at noon, with early access for FLC members starting April 13 at noon.
• MoMA Virtual Cinema: Free exclusively for MoMA members starting April 16th.

Among the most revered works of Cuban cinema, Humberto Solás’s masterful Lucía never had its stateside premiere at the inaugural edition of New Directors/New Films in 1972 because the print failed to arrive from Cuba due to the U.S.’s embargo. Some 49 editions of ND/NF later, we’ve come full circle: Solas’s vast black-and-white triptych, about three women negotiating their oppressive circumstances at three critical moments in Cuban history (the war for independence in the 1890s, the uprising against the Machado dictatorship in the 1930s, and the post-revolutionary 1960s), remains as astonishing and immersive today as it was way back when. Produced when Solás was just in his mid-20s, Lucía was, at the time, the most expensive Cuban film ever made; a singularly lush and dialectical period epic, it endures as perhaps that national cinema’s crowning achievement.